AP Language & Composition, Period 4
Mr. Bangs
April 30th, 2014
Corn-Pone Opinions Outline
I. Title and Author
a. Corn-Pone Opinions
b. By Mark Twain
II. Speaker
a. Famous Novelist, Reporter, and Editor
b. Social Critic
III. Audience
a. College kids
b. Labor Union Leaders
c. Managers and Executives
d. All of Society
IV. Subjects
a. Trends and fads
b. Social conventions
c. Herd Mentality
d. Independent thought
II.
V. Context
a. In this time period public education and printing is now accessible
i. Books and newspapers are frequently read by many people and are the sources of new trends and fads
b. Before the modern age, the internet, texting, and television
VI. Issues
a. Are our thoughts really our own or are they copied?
b. Fashions vs. Standards
c. How much approval comes from outside of ourselves and how much comes from others?
d. Are humans designed to conform?
VII. Stance
a. Twain believes that we often make our own thoughts but more often we copy what those around us and follow what our peers and parents do.
b. Twain states that we are creatures of outside influence and that our own self approval comes from validation by others rather than ourselves.
c. Twain states that we copy the trends we see around us without much self thought.
VIII. Evidence
a. “The hoopskirt runs its coure and disappears. Nobody reasons about it. One woman abandons the fashion; her neighbor notices this and follows her lead” (Page 718, Para 5).
b. “Our table manners, and company manners and wtret manners change from time to time, but the changes are not reasoned out: we merely notice and conform. We are creatures of outside influences; as we rule we do not think, me only imitate” (Page 719, Para 2).
c. “We know why Catholics are Catholics; why Prebyterians are Presbyterians; … We know it is a matter of association and sympathy, not reasoning and examination; that hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics, or religion which he got otherwise that through his associations and sympathies” (Page 719, Para 3).
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